Dell to cut 6,650 jobs as PC market downturn continues

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Dell has become the latest major tech company to confirm it will be laying off workers, with an estimated 6,650 jobs expected to be culled as PC sales continue to fall.

Dell office sign
Dell office sign


The list of layoffs at tech companies has grown, after Dell confirmed on Monday that it too will be reducing its headcount. Over 6,000 jobs are anticipated to go at the PC maker in the next few months.

In a memo to staff made public and published to the Dell website, Co-chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke writes that the company previously paused external hiring, limited travel, and reduced its expenditure on external services to "navigate the challenges of the global economic environment and uncertainty ahead." Believing that "market conditions continue to erode with an uncertain future," Clarke says the company needs to do more to "prepare for the road ahead."

According to IDC in January, overall shipments of "traditional PCs" during the 2022 holiday quarter were down 28.1%, with Dell declining 37.2%. Instead of shipping 21.6 million PCs, Dell managed just 15.5 million in the quarter.

By contrast, Apple's shipments declined just 2.1%, from 7.7 million to 7.5 million.

The list of changes includes "some resets" across the company, including aligning its regional sales and Dell Technologies Select teams for consistency, integrating its various services teams, and changing resources with its ISG engineering teams.

"Unfortunately, with changes like this, some members of our team will be leaving the company," Clarke admits. "There is no tougher decision, but one we had to make for our long-term health and success."

The language of the memo in discussing job cuts makes the layoffs seem lighter than they really are. According to Bloomberg, Dell will be cutting 6,650 roles, which amounts to 5% of the global workforce.

The cut in jobs will in theory bring Dell down to 126.3 thousand employees, the lowest in six years.

Dell's confirmation of job losses follows similar January announcements by Microsoft and Google, offloading 10,000 and 12,000 employees respectively. In November Meta warned it was culling 11,000 jobs.

For Apple, it has managed to avoid most of the layoff problems by hiring at a much slower rate to its rivals, though it too is expected to reduce its headcount simply by reducing hiring. Apple did let some employees go with non-seasonal workers in retail channels outside of Apple Stores, but not at significant levels.

Read on AppleInsider

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 11
    davgregdavgreg Posts: 1,037member
    We are afflicted with Dells at work and the laptop we are provided has the absolute worst trackpad I have ever experienced in my life. 
    Just really cheap stuff, exactly why IT loves it.
    danoxbaconstang
  • Reply 2 of 11
    davgreg said:
    We are afflicted with Dells at work and the laptop we are provided has the absolute worst trackpad I have ever experienced in my life. 
    Just really cheap stuff, exactly why IT loves it.
    You should use the mouse on Windows. 
  • Reply 3 of 11
    danoxdanox Posts: 2,852member
    Mike close it down and sell it for scrap or go private again….. :smile:
    baconstang
  • Reply 4 of 11
    sbdudesbdude Posts: 259member
    The words "shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders" still ring in my ears . . .

    StrangeDaysrobin huber
  • Reply 5 of 11
    davgreg said:
    We are afflicted with Dells at work and the laptop we are provided has the absolute worst trackpad I have ever experienced in my life. 
    Just really cheap stuff, exactly why IT loves it.
    Commodities are great when you rely on their interchangeable nature. Someone with a spreadsheet probably worked out that even with a 20% failure rate they can buy enough surplus devices to just swap the failed ones out and still have a lower lease than choosing a higher-quality device. Plus they save money on IT staff salaries because they're not paying people to actually think.

    What? You want to know the cost to end user productivity of this approach? Not my department, sorry...
    DAalseth
  • Reply 6 of 11
    Dell is in a world of pain. Imagine what would happen to any company that suddenly had its revenues shrink by a third. Of course, IDC is the source of this information so we need to be skeptical, but even so it's a revenue loss of at least 25% - ouch. Plus we don't know if there was inventory built up with the expectation of normal sales...

    If the sales forecasting team haven't lost their jobs then the company is clearly expecting them to learn a lot from this.
  • Reply 7 of 11
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    danox said:
    Mike close it down and sell it for scrap or go private again….. :smile:
    Mac users will never Michael Dell forget those dumbass words he spoke all those years ago, especially since Dell’s market cap is pocket change to Apple’s now.
    edited February 2023 robin huber
  • Reply 8 of 11
    Unfortunately, dickish Michael Dell still has his private island and dragon hoard of gold. The company could go belly up tomorrow and he’d just order another Corona from his hammock while his workers find a way to feed their kids. Such is justice in corporate America. 
    mark fearing
  • Reply 9 of 11
    Unfortunately, dickish Michael Dell still has his private island and dragon hoard of gold. The company could go belly up tomorrow and he’d just order another Corona from his hammock while his workers find a way to feed their kids. Such is justice in corporate America. 
    That's a big part of the problem. The level of 'rich' these guys amass since they hardly pay personal taxes and corporations are at the lowest tax level (check out the tax rate in the 'golden era' of the 1950's) so workers suffer but these blowhards just don't care. And often the media wants to tie success and wealth to someone being really smart, or really hard working. B.S. It's as random as it gets. Just look at the daily stupidity of CEO's declaring bankruptcy for companies they leveraged every dollar out of to increase their personal wealth. It's like saying the Kings of Medieval Europe were the hardest working and smartest people on their time because you know, they owned all the land... Nope.
    robin huberDAalsethbaconstangmuthuk_vanalingam
  • Reply 10 of 11
    DAalsethDAalseth Posts: 2,783member
    Unfortunately, dickish Michael Dell still has his private island and dragon hoard of gold. The company could go belly up tomorrow and he’d just order another Corona from his hammock while his workers find a way to feed their kids. Such is justice in corporate America. 
    It's like saying the Kings of Medieval Europe were the hardest working and smartest people on their time because you know, they owned all the land... Nope.
    A very good analogy.
    baconstang
  • Reply 11 of 11
    I have to admire Michael Dell as a money making machine before he even reached his double-digit age. That said, 25 years ago, I purchased a Dell PC, and then watched the thing rust away in front of my eyes after just 18 months. A few years later, working in IT, we sold Dell rack servers to some of our clients, and the next thing, Dell is ringing the same clients direct trying to upgrade / replace those same servers less than 12 months old (that was the end of selling Dell rack servers to our customers). Now as a Cloud Engineer, I have a company Dell laptop (what a POS), but just use it to do my weekly timesheet and for the odd trip to the office. Cheap and nasty kit for 30+ years.
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